Women cannot love what they pity. There may be some emotional confusion in the more compassionate (e.g., nurse types), who think that when they deliver the broken from their infirmity they are engaging in love, but it is a different thing, and the confusion causes nothing but pain.

Yamazaki, emotionally mis-educated, and weak from the beginning, does not know this. He is rescued (in a flashback shown late in the episode, but excerpted earlier on) by a girl from a group of bullies. He thinks it is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

There is a desire among men to rescue women (read Dostoevsky’s The Idiot to see how well it can go). Whether there is a concombinant desire among females to be rescued is difficult to discern – modern socialization is against the notion, but modern socialization takes much that is natural and calls it perversion. What can be hardly questioned is this: women have no desire to rescue men. To fix them, yes. To take something good but imperfect and get the credit for finding that last part that needs to be changed and doing the deed, absolutely. But not rescuing the piteous.

Yamazaki’s school friends.

Yamazaki’s incident was a prepubescent anomaly, a weird happenstance that occurred in the shadow area of life where girls can still physically keep up with boys. When the testes drop and the testosterone comes in, the muscle development of boys is remarkable. The boy you could out-wrestle two months ago can now snap you like a twig.

(Girls, take notice: if any adult male has let you get some shots in, like in a martial arts environment, they were being nice. If they really went at you, they would destroy you. They don’t do it, because there is no honor in it.)

This is a Yamazaki episode. He doesn’t seem to get many, but with Sato’s own problems being essentially replayed from previous episodes: “What is my real deal with this Masaki chick? Should I be imagining a 17-year-old completely starkers?”*

*Answer: only if you never tell anyone about it.

Meanwhile, Yamazaki asks out his “girlfriend” for a fireworks festival show, and is told she can’t make it. What he does post-rejection is disturbing. He picks up a pamphlet that has a Gatchaman-style character on the cover, pokes out the eyes , and uses it as a mask, screaming at imaginary villains.

Then, drunk, he tells Sato he has told his classmates they’ll have their game done, and up for a show, in just one month. And to make sure that Sato does his work, he insists they sit together in Yamazaki’s room, working side by side. Yamazaki does the art, Sato writes the scripts. Sato creates his sexy scenarios, occasionally screaming and throwing his laptop because he imagines, again and again, Masaki in the place of the naked girl.

Yamazaki recognizes this love-sickness, and tries to share his method for fighting it. He puts on the mask, and shouts with conviction, “Get Lost, Women!”

Young Yamazaki, fighting girl power.

He essentially says love was invented by the white man (hi!) to spread capitalism, and it is his and Sato’s duty to hate women. Wear the mask, scream. Wear the mask, scream. Flashback: Yamazaki, rescued from beaters, asks the girl out. She pities him, and cannot love him, and lies about a previous engagement. Cut to the fireworks festival, and Yamazaki sees the girl with a guy – one of the guys who’d beat on him.

What makes this different from the usual “One event that invents the entire psychological development of the character” is that we see his creepy, pathetic escape from the emotional pain: he puts on a mask, and playacts his murder of the villains. Yamazaki has never developed the mature reaction to this rejection*. Rather than bracing himself, he loses himself.

*Kids, the mature reaction is “F’ her, I’ve got six more on the line.” And for that to be true. Abundance mentality.

Then the twist: the present-day school girl calls. Her audition (which Yamazaki was sure was just an excuse) was postponed. She’s free, and would go watch the fireworks with him. She did not fit the pattern that Yamazaki’s personal shame and self-hatred had imposed on her, and all womankind. She just had something to do, and is (Christ only knows why) willing to spend some free time with Yamazaki.

“Get lost, everybody.”

So Sato is entirely dropped. His hilarious reaction, after chanting for Sato, again and again, “Get lost women, Get lost women,”, is “Get Lost, everybody.” Then he sulks in bed, hoping that there’s a terrible fireworks accident and they all die.

Of course, Misaki rescues him from his ennui, asking him to go to the fireworks fest with her. They hold hands. This is not progress. This is damage finding damage.